Fighters: AutoTrim

[Winnerhofer]

Do fighters AutoTrim à l'Airbus?

[dat581]

F-18 does. Trims itself constantly to 1G.

[Ascend Charlie]

Well, that takes away the punch of the motto above every 2FTS instructor's whiteboard in the Macchi days:

"TRIM OR FAIL"

What does it say at OCU at Billsville? "Turn on the autoTRIM OR FAIL"

[Hempy]

Charlie the equation is simple...over time system complexity increases but knucklehead IQ's do not..

[DITYIWAHP]

The flight controls of most modern fighters auto-trim to 1.0 g. However, the pilot will still be able to tweak that datum using the stick top trimmer, in case the nul setting is off by a small amount (design imperfections / system errors etc).

Aircraft like the F-16 will pitch-up when in a climb or dive because the system will seek to achieve 1.0 g in all flight regimes (i.e. when in a 45 deg dive, the normal g should be 0.7). In more modern aircraft like Typhoon, the flight control laws are designed to compensate for these changes - so it's even easier to fly (and employ weapons).